Apparently, there are six people in the United States called Vinnie Fayed. It's such an achingly perfect name for a wine writer. All of the best names I dreamt up for this blog are already taken - Spitbucket, Vignettes, Vinspiration. Even the crap ones are all taken. It's hardly surprising considering I'm joining the wine blog world well over ten years after the first one appeared, which must be something like 180 in blog years.

The reason it took so long to launch my own site is because some scoundrel is cybersitting on richardhemming.com. That's something I should probably take as a compliment, like when people tell me at least my teeth draw attention away from my bald patch. My best alternative was richardhemmingmw.com but to lay claim to that involved the small matter of becoming a Master of Wine. A mere six years later, here we are. Ta-da!

I'll talk more about passing the MW in due course. Here, I'm going to explain what this blog is for. 

Like most wine blogs, it's a bit of a vinity project, ho ho. I'm going to post stuff here that doesn't really suit the other publications I write for, such as that abysmal pun. Realistically, it will be an irregular diary of my experiences within the London wine trade. In that way, I'll be following in the electronic footsteps of the wine blogfather, Jamie Goode. I've read his blog since I started working in wine over ten years ago and he's since become a colleague and friend. That makes the wine trade sound a bit like the mafia. Which it is, only with corkscrews instead of guns.

Corkscrews instead of guns. Maybe that should be the name of the blog.